Making Him Beg
by Lesera128
Summary: London. 1898. Shortly before he's due to leave with Darla on a trip to Romania, Angelus sees Brennan, who's recently returned from Egypt, one last time. Bones/Angel crossover. One-shot. Very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe" & "Barging In." Complete.


**Making Him Beg**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **_Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from Bones or Angel... or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? _**::**blinks**:: **_Good. Then moving on―_

**Summary: **_London. 1898. Shortly before he's to leave with Darla on a trip to Romania, Angelus has one last romp with Brennan. Bones/Angel crossover. One-shot. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe" and "Barging In." Complete. _

**A/N: **_Who knew so many people would dig the idea of a dark!Brennan doing the dance with Angelus? Well, let's be honest_—_we'd had our suspicions, hence why we wrote the first two pieces in this series, but the response we've gotten to "Toe to Toe" and "Barging In" surpassed our expectations. So, to everyone who read the first two pieces and shared their thoughts, thank you. To all you lurkers out there, come out of the shadows and de-lurk. Tell us what you think of what we've done. Believe it or not, reader feedback not only motivates us, but also helps us develop in our craft as writers. Also, we know by any logical or standard convention, a single piece of approximately 20k+ words isn't really a one-shot. But, the way this piece was crafted, there really wasn't a way to break it without doing so at a very awkward place but for the very end that would've left us with 20k in one part and about 2k in the other, so we've just chunked the whole piece in one go. We apologize if that's a bit much for some, but we figured more would like it and the rest would deal...so enjoy (once you realize that this is a big chunk to tear off once you've commtted yourself...not that that's anything new for Dharmasera readers, so we digress)._

_UNF ALERT: Surprise, surprise. We of Dharmasera, Inc. like to keep things above board so people know what they're getting into ahead of time. Some people were quite shocked at the turn our kink took in "Barging In." Well, to that...all we can say is, pay attention to the author's notes and what we say you're going to read, people! Yes, we really DO mean it. So, for those with delicate sensibilities_—_or to people who may be taking a peek of this in a professional setting or with their kiddies around...do so AT YOUR OWN RISK. While the encounter in this one is not quite as, well, edgy as the one in "Barging In," depending on your personal preferences, it's definitely not our usual _*cough* _logistical offering (and in a way that we can only get away with when it's Angelus, we know) so if you like to keep your leisure reading between the oft-observed lines of common decency, consider yourself duly warned and turn back now while you've got the chance. Seriously. WE MEAN IT. We __really__ mean it. Last chance...no foolies or take backs! Okay...anyone still here? Because, if you're still with us, make sure you have that glass of ice water and cold compress handy, because you're gonna need it. Enjoy!_

* * *

The first thing he became aware of was her piercing blue eyes staring at him in expectant anticipation.

The first thing that she became aware of was that, when he finally awoke, and saw her looking at him in quiet expectation, he became angry.

_Very, very angry._

And, that was when, seemingly quite pleased with the reaction her efforts had wrought, Temperance Brennan smiled.

It was a smile that the vampire named Angelus knew very well. It was a smile she often smiled when she knew she'd done something that was wrong―at least from the vantage point of not wanting to piss him off―and she was delighting in that act.

"Brennan!" Angelus growled, as he narrowed his eyes at her. "This isn't funny."

As he had nearly forty years earlier when he'd woken from unconsciousness to find himself similarly bound, hanging from the timbered rafters of Brennan's terraced house on London's West End, his wrists were bound and his arms spread in a wide enough V-shape to stretch the muscles of his broad chest. The bindings themselves offered just enough slack to let him struggle for her amusement, but not enough to enable him to slip his wrists from the bindings in order to get free of their―and, by default, _her_―grasp. But, this second time he found himself having awakened to see that he was strung up and dangling for her amusement differed from the first in one crucial way. This time, the bindings were not of twisted hemp rope, but rather shimmering braids of twinkling blue light that hummed, pricked, and crackled against his skin while he was restrained. Despite their lethally dangerous appearance, the blue cords of energy actually left no marks either on the centuries-old wood rafters that supported the ceiling or on Angelus' warm-hued olive skin. He pursed his lips, as he noted the slight but very important difference, and he briefly wondered what he'd done to merit such a display of magic given how rarely she used her powers in front of him. Angelus tried to recall what the last thing he remembered was before he'd awakened that could have elicited such a response from her, but struggled as he felt a dull ache on the side of his head cloud his thoughts.

For her part, Brennan watched Angelus struggle with amusement. After two or three more moments had passed between them in silence, she smiled as she at last decided she was ready to address his earlier point. "No," she chuckled, as she watched him struggle against the bindings that held his muscular―and _naked_, she observed with a luscious smack of her lips―body firm. "It's not funny," she agreed, walking around to see how the muscles of his back and shoulders rippled as they tried to modulate and adjust to the constant strain of supporting his body weight. "But, it _is _amusing, Angelus. Very, _very _amusing."

She refrained from adding the word 'arousing' to her descriptor of his current predicament, but admitted to herself that, in addition to being amused by the current situation, she was also _very _aroused as she watched him struggle. The more angry he became, the more she liked it, but she also knew that this was an important opportunity that she couldn't waste, since so few of them ever manifested themselves for her where Angelus was concerned. He'd made a crucial mistake―an uncharacteristic tactical error, as it were―and she intended to take full advantage of it.

As he saw Brennan responding to him in such a flippant way, Angelus experienced a flash of anger at her impudent behavior. The same personality quirk that both intrigued, infuriated, and enthralled him of her made Angelus want to simultaneously fuck her senseless and strangle her into unconsciousness. He grunted a couple of times as he tested his bindings once more, although a rational part of his brain told him that such efforts were a complete waste of time and that the only way he was going to get free was if she wanted to set him loose. Realizing that his tongue was the only tool he had at his disposal to get her to free him, Angelus set to work immediately on using his words to get himself liberated.

"Get me down from here!" he demanded, his growl quickly transforming into a bark. "I mean it, woman. Right now!" He grunted and swung his body forward, finding that―again, just as it was the case on that night in 1860 when he'd found himself hanging from these same rafters―his feet barely touched the floor, just enough apparently to keep the strain on his arm, back and chest muscles limited to a slow, low-intensity burn. Huffing in frustration, he looked down and saw then that he was still completely nude, and he wondered if that might be an advantage he could press with her. "You know, lass," he said with a smirk, his anger and lust at seeing her watching him―her arousal clear to him in more than one way and that arousal merely serving to fuel his own raging want of her―sublimating for a moment. "If you'd have wanted to admire my physique, you could have just told me, and I would've gladly have taken a few minutes to lounge around in my birthday suit for you to look at all you want."

"Who says that's anything I want at all, Angelus?" Brennan asked, tilting her head as she met his dark eyes. "Because, I certainly know I didn't say anything about anything I want in the current moment."

Again, her calm nonchalance got the better of him for a split second. His eyes narrowed and his fury bubbled up again as his quip failed to garner the anticipated response from her. "This is a fuckin' crock of shite, woman―cut me the fuck down. _Now_."

Taking a step towards him, she crossed her arms against the soft silkiness of the black satin robe she'd pulled on to cover her own nakedness. She narrowed her eyes and then lowered her voice into the silkily smooth dangerous tone―the one that never failed to arouse him―as she told him, "Not until you apologize."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the final memory he had before everything went dark suddenly popped into his mind. He recalled sitting on the chaise lounge in her bedroom, watching her undress and making casual conversation as she did so, and that he'd made several offhand comments that he'd thought had been particularly funny...and then blackness. He pursed his lips as he struggled to remember which thing he'd said had been the one that had apparently set her off.

Sighing, some of his earlier anger transition into exasperation, once he spoke again. "Oh, hell," he muttered, the aggravation clear in his voice as he said, "What do I need to apologize for now that has you feelin' the need to conk me on the head again and truss me up here―because, make no mistake, lass, that's _exactly _what's happened here whether you use hemp rope or that hoity toity witch's tricks of yours―and you know I _don't _like bein' tied up."

"Well," she told him with a none too impressed tone in her voice. "Maybe you should've thought about that one before you made that crack."

"Which one?" he responded, the words out of his mouth before he'd realized that he'd betrayed one of his weaknesses since he wasn't sure why, precisely, she was so upset with him.

Granted, he had a vague notion as to what he'd done. But, as to what the specifics were and why this particular crack he'd made had set her off in a way that she'd never really been affected before during all their thirty to forty years of bickering, he wasn't really certain.

For her part, Brennan stared at him in complete surprise. "Which one?" she parroted back at him. "What do you mean 'which one'? You know what asinine comment you make that was a step too far...even for _you_, Angelus."

"Humor me," he said with a completely straight face. "And while you're at it, if we're gonna be here for a while with you gettin' off on watchin' me fettered and restrained by your bullshite hocus pocus, how about some civility that those tightwads that you've no doubt been consortin' with while you've been digging in the dirt?"

"What do you want?" she asked, leveling her gaze at him.

"Well," he said with a sly smile and a pleasant nod. "How 'bout we start with a bit of common decency, lass, the kind that seems become less and less common every day? So, it's by my thinkin' that, you know, until you get around to undoin' whatever damn incantation you've used to do this to me, maybe you could throw a kettle on so we can have some tea and crumpets while we wait."

"Tea?" Brennan snickered. "_You_ want _me _to make you...a cup of tea?"

He swung forward and back again in his bindings, laughing as he felt the long burn in his biceps as his body strained against the crackling blue braids that held him. "Yeah, I do. And make it Irish breakfast tea, of course," he said. "That Earl Gray you drink is utter shite," his voice trailed off as he made a face before he continued. "I still don't know why you still insist on pourin' that horrible two-bit swill down your pretty gullet after all these years since I know you're not _that_ much of a tight-ass and so I know it can't be the cost of things. Earl Gray..." He paused as he allowed his handsome features to twist into a face of complete distaste to let her know his opinion of the tea she usually drank in front of him. "Seriously, Brennan, it's horrible. If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, lass, English tea is complete twaddle. So, how about showin' me, as your guest, at least a bit of consideration...especially since you seem hell bent on lettin' me flail here like some poor fish out of water, hmmm? Tea...and maybe a wee dram of something stronger until we can come to some type of...accommodation on why you're so riled up?"

"You're serious, aren't you?" Brennan suddenly asked, as comprehension dawned. "You still don't know why we went from me stripping in front of you when I was perfectly amenable to your suggestion that we adjourn to my bedroom for a bit of sport―even if you did show up here when I _was _exhausted and wanted to do nothing but bathe and eat and sleep―"

"Now, be fair, lass," Angelus interrupted her with a clucking of his tongue. "I offered to wait until after you ate, I said I'd help you with the bathing, and I only wanted make it so that you'd just get a better night's sleep when you'd been fucked senseless since it's a scientific fact that people who've just been fucked senseless sleep sounder and wake up more well rested than those who doze off still needin' a good lay."

Brennan glared at him, but ignored his words as she continued,"And, even after all of _that_, because for some strange reason that I don't know, I felt as though I actually missed you, so I agreed to a bit of play time...and then you said something that was dickish enough that it made me overlook the very uncharacteristic, if somewhat pleasantly surprising, action of yours in bringing me those flowers. So, this shouldn't be too hard for you to figure out if you know that whatever mouth vomit you tossed out pissed me off enough to stop when we were fooling around to hit you in the head." She stopped and then said, "Come on, Angelus. I didn't hit you _that_ hard. Think." He narrowed his own eyes at Brennan, but she refused to be cowed. Instead, she merely said, in a quite gracious manner that she knew might merely serve to annoy him more, "If it's any help, here's a hint. You were just about thirty seconds or less away from getting hit on the other side of your skull since you just made the same piss-poor insinuation when you were rambling about tea."

He blinked at her for a minute until comprehension dawned, and he rolled his eyes at her. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Brennan. Really? You can't be serious. I mean, are you trying to tell me that you did all _this _just because I said..._that_?"

Pursing her lips, Brennan's nostrils flared as she realized that he now knew which of his comments had annoyed her so much. Nodding her head, she sharply answered, "Yes!"

"It was just a _joke_, Brennan," Angel told her, as he rolled his eyes at her answer. "It was a joke. You know? A joke...as in a witty crack. Banter...ya know? Remember? Bickerin'? We do it to one another all the time, if you'll recall. We bicker, you know—it's what we do, so I don't know why now should be any different since you've never hit me in the head for somethin' I've said before...especially, since you've been enjoyin' my witty badinage―among my other considerable gifts―for goin' on forty years now. Never once, not in that entire time, have you ever taken any of it personally, so what gives? What's got you so sensitive now? If I didn't know any better, I'd say that somethin' happened to make you lose your sense of humor, mmm?"

"No," Brennan snapped. "That wasn't bickering or teasing or even you just running off at the mouth like you normally do, Angelus. You knew exactly what you were saying, and you said it anyway, and I don't much prefer it. You know that I've told you how I feel about my family. I don't like you making fun of them. Me? Fine. You can mock and ridicule me all you want, but this time you went too far. This time...well, this time, it just wasn't funny," she told him, looking her nose down at him as she spoke.

Angelus stopped as he pursed his lips and sighed. "You're right," he told her. "I forgot."

"So, you'll apologize then?" Brennan asked. "Because then I'd be more than satisfied, and I'll let you down so we can see what might be able to be salvaged of the night if you still want to pursue with a bit of that sport you were talking up earlier."

Looking at her, Angelus said, "I'm willin' to admit that I might've made a wee error in judgement about mentionin' your family if you're willin' to let me down―"

"Done," Brennan agreed quickly.

"Not so fast, lass," he said with a small shake of his head. "You haven't heard all my terms yet."

"You just said that you'd apologize, and I'd turn you free, so I don't see what the problem is―" Brennan replied.

"Nay," he corrected her. "That was only _part _of the deal. The whole deal is this: I admit I might've been mistaken in what I did, you get me down from here _and _admit that even if the part about your family wasn't entertainin', the part about your new-found devotion to antiquities is funny as hell...especially given who and what you are. Deal?"

Brennan considered his words and then frowned again. "But, it _wasn't _funny―especially after I had just warned you making fun of my work. You know how serious I am about my research into the antiquities of Egypt. I've developed a keen interest in archaeology and anthropology and―"

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, cutting her off, as he looked at her with slightly contrite eyes. "Just, please, don't start spoutin' off to me about your new-found love of playin' in the dirt and bein' fascinated with old things. I'm sorry I made fun of it, Brennan. But, if I have to hear the whole explanation again as to why you think you've finally found your true callin' in life after three hundred and fifty years or more, just because you finally get to find stuff that you probably just lost a couple of centuries before in the first place, I think I'm gonna stake myself right now. I mean, it's not like there's a lot of interestin' things to be found about rootin' around and lookin' at bones and pieces of pots and all that other nonsense that you were ramblin' about earlier. Frankly, lass, it's completely borin'...and so uninterestin' that it's not even funny...unless you're just into obsessin' about the past, which, given our lots in the world, I suppose I can understand, but there are so many more attractive and intriguin' things which you could be using to arouse yourself..." He stopped and let his eyes narrow as he licked his lips and added, "Like me, truth to be told, if you'd stop that insipid academic blowharded pontificatin' that it sounded like you'd taken to earlier, and that was only five minutes worth of conversation about I said hello, you said hello, and you took my polite inquiry as to how you were to be anything more than me being civil―since at least one of us can keep up decorum before we got to the wonderfully improprietous and lewd part of this evening's pasttimes."

He made another face as he considered her rather pompous chatter that she'd made when he'd first greeted her and then said, the disgust clear in his voice as he spoke, "The next thing you're gonna tell me is that you're gonna become a suffragette, mmm?" Though, to be honest, with a name like yours, it makes more sense that you'd join an even more unholy crusade than suffrage...as bad as _that _one is...I mean, I don't think I can think of anything worse than the bannin' of spirits." He stopped, made a face, and then scowled as he added, "No, I take that back. I can. It doesn't happen a lot, but every so often the occasional damn abstinence movements that some hard-up spinster gets in her warped brain to spearhead every now and again happen, and I do think that _those _are worse than the teetotalers." He stopped, made a face, and then shuddered again as he muttered, "Temperance and abstinence. No drinkin' and no fuckin'...I mean, what kind of life is that? Not any that I'd want to have. Fuck."

Brennan, half-tempted to chuckle at his amusing tangent of a rant, instead took the opportunity to tease him a bit further as she said, "You know, Angelus, I think that may be the first time that anyone's ever said my first name in conjunction with the notion of repressing sexual behavior. After three or more centuries, any time that you can do something that's novel for me, I'm inclined to reward it―"

"So, does that mean that you'll let me loose?" he asked hopefully.

This time Brennan couldn't help but to smirk a bit as she shook her head and said, "No. Not until you apologize."

"But," he sputtered. "I did!"

Shaking her head again, she wagged her index finger at him as she stepped closer to where her magical restraints held his handsome body firmly in her grasp...or, _exactly _where she wanted him to be. As she let her eyes roam up and down his body once more in blatant appreciation, she said, "It doesn't count if you're setting terms or simply apologizing to me to get me to shut up, Angelus."

He studied her for a minute and then said, "Fine. Then, how's about you let me down from here, and I'll find another way...or two, that I can use somethin' of mine to shut that lovely mouth of yours up with, ehhh?" He wagged his eyebrows to see if he could find some way to tempt her into a more generous mood. "You know I'm good for it, lass, mmmmmm?" He arched his eyebrow and smacked his lips, letting his tongue slide between them slowly and lasciviously, and he smirked at the subtle little gasp that he heard pass from her mouth, a tiny little sucking breath that would have been inaudible to any human lover but which rang loud in his ears as every one of his senses crackled in anticipation of being inside of her.

"So, come on," he crooned, letting his somewhat faded Gaeltacht brogue bleed through on the edges of his voice as a lazy grin curved his lips. "Let me down, and I'll make it up to you. Right now. Let me go, and in less than five minutes, I promise you'll be screamin' my name, havin' forgotten your own name as you're clenchin' those pretty drippin' wet walls of yours with my cock poundin' into you like fuckin' crazy until both our everlivin' minds are ready to explode, both literally and figuratively, from the pure pleasure of it. I won't be selfish, lass. You know I'll see to your needs first...the way you know only I ever have...and you know I'll make it very, _very _good for you." He laughed softly at an unspoken memory that made him twist his hips at the thought of it.

"It's been a fair spot of time since last we bedded," he said, "and since then, I've a wee trick or two that I know will drive you fuckin' wild. So, how about it?" He paused and shook his head. "Aye, lass? Doesn't that sound more appealin' than us standin' here like two old maids runnin' off at the mouth when there are so many other more...pleasant ways to spend our time? What do you say, Brennan? End this now, and I'll be good...well, relatively good—in all the ways that really matter, aye?" He flashed his eyebrows and grinned. "I promise."

She blinked at him for a minute and then slowly shook her head, clearly not buying into his honeyed attempt to woo her into giving him what he really wanted. "No way," Brennan told him quite simply. "That's not good enough, Angelus."

"Ahhh, for fuck's sake, Brennan," he snapped, when he realized that he was further afield in getting her to bend to his will than perhaps even he'd thought he actually was just a few moments earlier. His frustration spiked as he growled, "I've had enough of this, Brennan. We're done playin' now. Fuckin' done, huh? Seriously. I didn't come here to waste the night with you abradin' me so fiercely for one little turn of my tongue that wasn't even anywhere near your pretty tits, snatch, or ass. So, you're goin' to say whatever magic little ditty you need to say to get me loose or else I'm gonna get real _fuckin' _pissed. More pissed than you've ever seen me before, lass. Fair warning."

He arched his shoulders back and swung his body rearwards with a frustrated huff. "I've had about enough of this joke of a fuckin' trip down memory lane," he said. "Especially since this reminiscin' of ours doesn't seem to involve reenactin' any of the tasty bits that involved us sweatin' and screamin' and comin' long and hard from the all the wicked sport we've enjoyed, which really just irritates the shite out of me since all I want right now which is what I came here for, namely a spot of good and solid fuckin' before I'm off for who knows how long with Darla and the crew to Romania and you run off again to sojourn with the pyramids."

He narrowed his blackened eyes and leaned forward again in his bindings. "Now, are you going to let me down so we can get to where we were before you used that pretty lil' vase to knock me unconscious, or do I have to show you how much of a bastard I really can be when I have a mind to be cruel?" He narrowed one eye and cocked his head to one side. "You've seen my work. And as much as I hate to admit it, there's no doubt that Darla's chatted you up on the subject, mmm? So I know you know what I'm capable of—for good or bad, ehhh?"

Walking up to him, Brennan tugged at the sash on her robe, loosening it just a bit so that he could see the swell of her luscious breasts as she inhaled and exhaled purposely to move her chest up and down. She then pressed her warm body against his as she tilted her head and nipped his earlobe with her teeth, eliciting a low groan and a slight shiver from him. She smiled when she felt his body relax a bit at her nearness, no doubt because he thought she was about to cut him loose.

Pleased with the turn of events, Brennan opened her mouth wider, puffing a warm breath of moist air into his ear, before she whispered softly, "I'm not scared of you, Angelus. I never have been, and I never will be. And, I think you know what I'm capable of—for good or bad...so, the answer's still no." Her grin widened when she felt him tense again as she clarified, "That is...not until you apologize..._for real_ this time...especially since I'm still annoyed at you for that little comment that I know you made because you thought it would slip by me. Remember? The one crack you made about me only having taken a shine to archaeology because I either want to find some sort of special family heirloom that I'd misplaced during the reign of Henry VIII or because it was my desire to find ancient mummies just because I wanted to drop in and say hello to some not-too-distant cousins who I was too cheap to bury in a proper grave when they kicked off because I come from a long line of tight asses?"

"Awww, come on, Brennan," he muttered again. "It's not like I was completely serious. I said I was wrong to bring up your family. And, as for the rest, I know you're many things...but even I know that you aren't _that _self-centered or _that _cheap. Though you do, as I seem to recall, have a very, _very _tight little ass," he said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

He grunted at the memory of what it felt to take her in her ass and wiggled his hips at the arousing thought. His fingertips tingled as he thought of how he'd squeezed the smooth, springy flesh of her hips and apple-shaped ass as he jerked into her, drilling into her tight hole again and again before the sensation nearly drove him out of his mind. He sighed at recalling how he'd come in her asshole, not quite as often as he'd have liked, but he tended to break harder in the moments when she let him come at her from the rear than he ever had in any of their other sexual escapades. Angelus grinned, savoring the private memory of seeing his fluids dribble out of her ass each time he pulled out of her once they'd both shattered.

"Aye," he said as he wiggled his tongue demonstratively. "I'd be lyin' if I said I didn't think about that tight fuckin' ass of yours from time to time. You know, but only once in a wee while, when I'm alone."

Once again, Brennan was caught slightly off-guard by the randomness of Angelus's mind. Her nostrils flared again when he gave her the backhanded compliment. She narrowed her eyes before she drew back from him. She shot him one final look that was really more of a glare before she turned around to leave no doubt that she was going to let him to stew in his own juices for a while unless he did something to stop her _and _make amends for his annoying insults.

"Come on, woman," he said, a certain softness to his honeyed Irish brogue as the syllables fell slowly from his lips. "You drive me fuckin' mad, more than any other woman ever has. Once I had you, no other woman would really do. You're the gold standard of fuckin'. Even if you didn't know before, now you do, right? You know I'm about to be leavin' for a while, but when I found out you were just now back from your Egyptian travels, I all but dropped whatever I was fuckin' doing because I wanted to come and see you. Doesn't that please you?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him and then said, "Maybe."

He tilted his head and then sighed with a slight look of his disgust on his face. "You know, on a slightly unrelated note, I think you had the right idea of things...gettin' out of London while the gettin' was good. I can't take it anymore—this city, you know? It's gotten so bad these last hundred years. The smog is so suffocatin' that I can't even smell the dogshit when I walk the streets at night anymore. And that's to say nothin' of the uptight, moral hypocrisy of people that's made such prigs of every man and woman that it's gettin' hard to find a bit of sport without gettin' a whole sermon tossed at me in the process. I have to snap their necks just to get them to shut the fuck up before I drain them dry. Even the streetwalkers seem to have taken to self-righteousness, and it makes me want to throw up. It's like a fuckin' disease." He stopped and then narrowed his own gaze at her as his tone lowered a bit when he added slyly, "One which, apparently, even y_ou _aren't immune to for some stupid fuckin' reason."

Staring at him, Brennan's jaw tightened as she pursed her lips and then asked, "And, why do you say that, Angelus?"

He shook his head, then looked up at her again, gazing for a moment into her pale blue eyes before laughing gruffly. He then broke eye contact and glanced towards the door. "Oh, come on now, lass. I mean, really? You even have to be askin' me that one?"

She glared a bit at him to convey her answer in the affirmative.

"That get up you were all wrapped up in earlier," he clarified after he'd rolled his eyes at her. "I'm serious, Brennan. I damn near couldn't believe it when I made my way into your boudoir here and saw you standin' in front of your travelin' trunk and unpackin' as it were. I had to blink six or seven times over the course of two or three minutes straight before I was certain that I hadn't gone into the wrong woman's bedroom when I saw you. I mean, that damn dress you were wearin', that was such a fuckin' shame as it were, with it coverin' up all your most beautiful, delicious assets and such―it right and good fucked with my head, woman. So, what gives?"

He grunted and laughed, holding his tongue between his smirking lips before he rolled on into the next phase of his galloping rant. "Why hide yourself like that when you and I both know what goodies you've should be right and proud of and flountin' at every chance you get to show yourself off...and, in such tasty getups that I know you've got hidden in that armoir of yours. So, why change what was obviously a good look and try to make yourself look more hideous than you actually are if it isn't because you've taken on some of these same cretinous ideas as the rest of the realm. Tell me, since when was simply enjoyin' the body that you've got, by whatever means you acquired it―and, no, that's not me askin' for a history lesson, by the by―when did you decide that was no longer a pastime worth pursuin', huh? When did you decide to turn into one of the prissy goody-goodies that's more suited to being ravaged by me in a convent as retribution for that offensive priggishness rather than be creatively ravaged by me at her own invitation and for the sheer enjoyment and pure pleasure of havin' it done to ya?"

He grinned and licked his lips as he compared the image in his head of how he'd first seen her that night and compared it to the savory memory of the last time they'd been together during the city's crazy celebrations to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee two years earlier.

He swore he hadn't been with her two minutes before ripping her dress off her and running at her with a hot-blooded abandon that had surprised him with its unbridled aggression, not stopping to pleasure her in any way until he had thrown her down, pounding into her with gritted teeth and exploding in her with a savage shout.

They'd spent several days in bed doing things to one another that were new even for them―which was saying something. He recalled with particular satisfaction the new types of sighs he found out she would make when he covered her body with cold champagne and proceeded to use his tongue to lick it off of her as he whipped her arousal into a fever pitch. He thought of the way she'd looked in bed that day when he'd thrust into her one final time, her pert breasts heaving deliciously when her back arched off the bed at the moment of release. His mouth went dry when he thought of how she'd purred his name, and he felt his balls hitch as he ached to get her to make that sound again...and how unlikely it might be that he'd get the chance to do it if she'd gone all reformist on him about everything from antiquities to sex.

"Seriously, Brennan," he said, the paradox created by the two conflicting mental images he held of her in his memory obviously rankling him. "I don't get it. So, tell me―what was up with that beggar's-chic, vapid ensemble, huh? The long, shapeless ankle-length skirt and that equally shapeless, long-sleeved, button-down jacket that you were wearin' had you looking about sexy as my grandmother in her Sunday best was, so why the fuck were you embracin' that khaki brown color ensemble that you looking as plain and unsightly as I've ever seen you? Holy hell, lass―I mean it. You're gonna have to explain that one to me. What would possibly make you do that to yourself voluntarily...unless, wait..." He stopped as another thought occurred to him and his eyes brightened. He would've snapped his fingers had he been able to do so. Quirking a toothy grin at her, he said, "That was it, wasn't it?"

"What was it?" Brennan asked with a suspicious glance.

"You were dressin' that way because you'd lost some bet, didn't ya? I mean, that's what had to have happened, since we all know what a poor gambler you are, yeah?" he told her with a self-satisfied smirk.

Brennan scowled at him as she pursed her lips and remained silent. Angelus delighted in her cool disdain and shrugged slightly as he said, "Then, if that's not it, can you give me any other reason why you'd voluntarily cover up your tasty curves like you're goin' to some sort of church ladies' choir practice? Shite, woman. You might as well just wear a burlap sack and call it a fuckin' day."

Clucking her tongue, Brennan moved her jaw from side-to-side, her patience with his colorful comments clearly wearing thin. She was annoyed in that moment for two reasons. One, and the less important of the two, was that that she knew he was right. She hated how she had to dress given the field in which she desired to be taken seriously as a reputed and knowledgeable scholar by the academic community even though such dress went against every natural instinct her innate style possessed.

Secondly, and more importantly, as Angelus had talked about his opinion of her body, she felt the throbbing between her legs growing with each moment that passed, despite her earlier efforts to slack her want for him. Knowing if such a thing was happening that it was only a matter of time before her own wants would override her stubborn insistence that she see this game to its natural conclusion with Angelus submitting to her, Brennan's anger flashed as she realized all her efforts could be for nothing if she wasn't careful. Thus, she decided to step up her game as she hoped he'd give in before she did.

Walking purposely back towards him, she said in a voice that was edged with just a low and smooth enough tone that her voice sounded even impressively dangerous to her, "All right now, I think I've had just about enough of that from you, Angelus. For your information, I wear what I must to conform to the dictates of polite society so that I can participate without being censured in my work. As to the rest, I believe I've grown weary of your repartees and ripostes needling me about everything from my family to the way I dress to my sexual appetite―which we both know you've never had any cause to complain about before―and to several other things in between that you should be happy that I'm choosing not to remember in this moment."

Angelus craned his head back and swallowed drily at her reference to her sexual appetites, which sent his thoughts hurtling as he thought of how insatiable she'd always been in bed—more so than any woman he had ever been with, even more so than his sire, Darla, to the point that the last time he had spent a few days in her bed, she'd more than kept up with him until she'd left him sweaty, sated and mind-numbingly exhausted and still she'd pushed him, wanting more. His balls tightened, and he hissed at the pleasurable memory.

"So," she continued, "perhaps it would be a good time for me to tell you—in the interests and name of civil and courteous behavior—that it would be wise for you to stop talking...unless the next words out of your mouth are 'I'm sorry, Brennan'."

"Yeah?" he snorted, clearly not as impressed as Brennan was with herself in that moment. "Or, what? What else are you gonna do to me, now, lass?"

His nose twitched as another part of his anatomy began to stir at the thought of what he hoped she might be willing to do to him if she was angry enough. He thought of one night, a decade or so before, after they had spent a long evening bickering about something—whatever it was, it had been inconsequential enough that Angelus couldn't remember exactly _what _had set her off—when at some point, their aggravation had sublimated in the heavy fog of angry sex, and she had climbed on top of him, impaling herself on him and riding him hard until she shrieked his name so loud that someone passing by on the street below had thrown something against the window, the sound of which had interrupted their furious fucking long enough to make them laugh before the anger bubbled up in her again, and she'd rode herself to a second peak, and him to the edge of mind-ripping oblivion cursing all the while as she followed. She had that look in her eyes now, and he was curious as to how far she was from breaking, taking him over the edge with her.

"You think you're gonna shut me up somehow, huh? You got me all strung up, Brennan, so I can't be puttin' my hands to any sort o' use here. So all I got is me mouth, aye, and you're standin' way too far away for me to do much to help do anythin' about that priggish Victorian uptightness you've got goin' on there. Because you know what I think? I think the whole dressin' up in sackcloth and pretendin' you've gone all decent and respectable and become one of them is just one big fat lie. It's just that you've started to forget yourself in the heat of that nasty sun, lass. So I think it's a very good thing I arrived here when I did to remind you of exactly what...and who you are. And I think that begins with a bit of makin' you go so crazy that instead of fuckin' you sensless this time, I'm gonna fuck some sense back into that lovely if stubborn head of yours. And that starts, I think, if you'd just come a wee bit closer, and maybe loosen these bonds just enough that I might be able to put my tongue to work. And after just a few minutes, then I'm quite certain that I'd be able to get you hummin' the way you always do, you know, when you're warmed up and ready to go just like old times since we both know you're not the only one of us who can work a certain type of magic." He waggled his tongue suggestively.

"Aye. That's it. You been spendin' too much time in the desert. I know you have a drought that needs tendin' to, lass. I think that's the real reason why you've gone so far off the beaten path in both dress and demeanor. You need to be shown the way back, and that starts by ending that troublesome drought of yours, hmmm? And I'm just the one to tend to you and your drought, aye?"

"Angelus," she said, her voice sharp with warning even as a smile curved her lips since she wasn't going to let him win this bout between them. What had initially started as her being a bit oversensitive about one of his wisecracks had now started to shift into something infinitely more serious―how well each one knew the other and how expertly they could use that knowledge to their own benefit by bringing the other one to heel.

Knowing that if she was the one to cave it was likely he'd start to lose the source of fascination that had kept him intrigued with her for more than four decades, Brennan refused to yield. Instead, she doubled her resolve and renewed her determination not to give into him until he'd given into her―even if he _was _right about everything he'd just said...especially because he was more than right and most of what he'd said from a certain perspective. No, she wouldn't give him the satisfaction. She _couldn't_. Her decision made, Brennan spoke with a silky edge of velvet to her voice as she told him, "You're treading on very thin ice there, sweetness."

"You act as if I should be scared of ya," he snorted derisively. "Especially when, just like always, I'm the one who's got what you need just as much as you've got what I want. But that's not happening, lass. I'm not scared of you just like you're not scared of me. By now, I've come to seriously doubt that as being one thing that will ever happen between us."

"I didn't say you should be scared, Angelus," she corrected him with a light smile and a small shake of her head. "But worried? Most definitely. If I were you, I would _most definitely _be worried since I'm the sadist in this relationship, like you said, remember?"

"Psssh," he snorted as he leaned his head back. "Now I know we've had _this _conversation at least a dozen times or more before," he laughed. He then paused before he mused, "You know, maybe it's a good thing we're both gettin' outta this suffocatin'ly laughable country, because I'm thinkin' we sure as hell need to find a new set of topics of conversation or else we're gonna keep repeatin' ourselves since you insist in some type of verbal exchange to serve as some kind of foreplay instead of gettin' straight to the puttin' of my cock in your hole straight off like I prefer. Speakin' of, aye, I know all about your sadistic tendencies, lass. It's one of the things―many things, that is―that gets me as hard as I do when I'm thinkin' about ya. But I also know that the plain fact of the matter is, you won't hurt me because you want me to be healthy and strong enough to service your considerable needs and desires the way you and me both know only I can do. So what do you have to say to _that, _Brennan?"

He smirked and observed the brief flare of her nostrils and knew he was getting under her skin as she considered his words. When she was silent for another minute, he added jovially, "But just to show ya that I've got no hard feelin's for ya, even if there's a certain part of me that's very hard because of ya, I'll let you in on a little secret of mine. I'm quite willin' to endure a certain amount of your shite if I know, as you know, that it'll all end with my hips tucked in between those tasty thighs of yours and my cock snug up your hot, wet little snatch―which by the way, I already know is startin' to get wet 'cause I can smell you gettin' turned on. But even I've got my limits, Brennan. Enough is enough. There's no point to prolongin' your own sweet sufferin'...or mine. So, cut me down―or whatever the fuck it is you do since you've trussed me up with your sneaky magic tricks this time―and let's not be wastin' anymore time. I'll be makin' my way to Bucharest in fairly short order, and I was hopin' we could make the most of those three days until I have to leave, if you know what I mean."

"So," she said with a gracefully arched brow, "if I'm to understand this correctly, you think that the way to speed you on your way to a desired goal of spending three solid days fucking me senseless is to hurl insult after insult at me and expect me to melt into a warm pile of goo that's all ready for you to lick up with that rather skillful tongue of yours―skilled that is, when you're not flapping your mouth off like you have been in the last hour―and then what happens in this little fantasy of yours?"

"Then..." He looked at her, grinning and licking his lips as he observed the pink that had warmed her cheeks since he'd awoken from his unconsciousness. "Well, then I think, you bein' a playful type, and this sword of verbal swordplay being right up your alley, would consider this lovely bit of foreplay enough to get you all hot and buttery in anticipation of gettin' straight to the good stuff I know you've been waitin' for. So what comes next would be me rammin' into you until we both can't stand it anymore and are ready to die from want of comin'." He smirked, tilting his head to the side since in his current posture he couldn't offer his characteristic shrug. "How does that sound, lass? Huh? Because I can tell that you want it, you crave it, you need it...just like me. 'Cause I know I been waitin' for it...for you." He bent his head down as low as he could given the way she'd strung him up and saw he was already half-hard at the thought of her. "So, go on, woman. Tell the truth and shame the Devil. Admit it. Tell me that it's been the same for you. Tell me you want me."

"That part I'll gladly admit." she told him with an honest shrug of her shoulders. "I've never had a problem admitting that I want you. I've always wanted you, Angelus. But, you're a cretin if you think I've abstained from sex since last you shared my bed. Because, just in case you're wondering, I haven't wanted for sexual partners since last I saw you. Granted, my other lovers may not have been as creative or as enthusiastic as you, but I've made do when I had to. But," she paused as she considered his words. "The more interesting point here is the point you insinuated when you just said that you've been waiting for me. I must admit that the notion of you waiting for me strikes me as curiously amusing. Flattering even. So, tell me, have you undertaken to turn over a new leaf, sweetness? After all these years, have you changed your ways and decided to favor a path of monogamy?"

"Hardly," he laughed, then swung himself forward in his bindings as he felt the himself twitch in anticipation. "I'm not sayin' I don't ever fuck other women, but 'tis true I'd rather fuck fewer women and fuck you than not fuck you 't'all," he said with an open-mouthed grin. "So I have, per your precise specifications, refrained from contact with women so there's no chance in hell that you'd be sensing any taint about me but any that you put there yourself. I've avoided even brushin' shoulders with them on the streetcars, and made my supper on the blood of rather bland schoolboys these last six days. I even had me a good, long sweat in a steamin' bathhouse to purge the last bits of womanly anythin' from my body so that the only scent that would be on me was yours." He jerked his chin up as he shot her a lascivious smile. "Come on," he murmured. "Take a whiff and tell me if you smell a single bit o' woman on me. Mmmmm? Come on. I dare ya."

Brennan narrowed his eyes as she took a step closer to him and twisted her neck so that she could lean in and place her nose and mouth in the crook of his shoulder. She inhaled deeply, her nostrils tickling at the warm smell of him as his masculine scent of musk and cinnamon invaded her senses. She noted, with some obvious satisfaction, that he moved just a bit too much for it to have been coincidence and knew that he was interested to see what she would do.

"You're right," she told him, her voice quiet as she felt the heat jump from her body to his. "I can't smell any rancid or noxious odors about you."

"Told ya," he grinned in a slightly hoarse voice. "Aren't you proud of me now?"

"That's very satisfying," she agreed, her voice taking on a lower tone as she let her tongue dart out and caress the tip of his earlobe. She smiled when she heard him groan. Chuckling a throaty chuckle, she said, "I can only smell you and your want."

"Aye," he nodded, his eyes closed as he felt his want of her increase. The fine hair on his arms stood on end and his legs trembled—not from strain, since the way she had him bound allowed him to place very little of his weight on his legs or feet, but rather from the unsprung tension that was building up in every one of his muscles and coiling deep in his belly. A slight pinkness seemed to tint his olive complexion as his cool skin warmed at feeling her breath in his ear and the firm point of her tongue circle the edge of his earlobe. "There is that," he coughed.

"You want me," she murmured into his ear. "I can smell it on you. I can hear it in your voice. And, I can feel it when your stiff cock is brushing against my thigh. So, imagine this―as much as you're getting hard just because I'm touching you―you know what, Angelus?" she murmured against his skin, knowing his keen hearing could hear even a faint whisper on her end. "Imagine what it could be like if you could finally be like if you were free to do more than look and smell me. Yes, imagine that, sweetness. Imagine what you could do if you could touch and feel and taste me, Angelus. Or, you don't even have to imagine really since I'm sure you remember what its like. So, think on that as you debate whether apologizing is such a large price to pay or not for such liberation and the fruits that come with your freedom."

When she finished talking, she moved her mouth to what was one of her favorite points on his neck—just below the curve of his earlobe—and began to suck on the skin there. She moved her lips over his skin, revealing in the feel of his body twisting against his bounds as he tried to press himself up more tightly against her. She felt her own want increasing, but she resisted the temptation to give in to him in that moment. She heard him groan slightly, and that sound signaled to her that it was time to move on, which was why she tilted her head as she used her tongue to drag a line down his neck, letting the tip of it flick the edge of his Adam's apple as she licked her way towards the notch at the base of his neck. She drew a couple of circles with the point of her tongue, then pressed her lips to his skin as she sucked firmly. When she felt the hum in his throat vibrate against her nose, the sensation made her laugh as she pulled her lips away from his skin to look into his eyes, which she saw had been squeezed shut at some point in the course of her teasing him.

"You like that, sweetness?" she said, taking care to ensure he felt each and every puff of warm air that left her mouth as she spoke her carefully-formed syllables. "Yes...I think you do. I most certainly think you do. Admit it."

He grunted, raising his chin and exposing his neck fully to her. "You're a wicked, wicked woman," he said, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed heavily in response to her resuming her mouth's explorations.

"Yes," she said softly, pausing as she traced a line along the edge of his left collarbone with the very tip of her tongue. "You knew that, though, didn't you?"

"Ohhh," he answered, sighing as her draw a warm, wet trail of soft, lightly-suctioned kisses up from the base of his neck to the outer point of his shoulder. He squirmed, but found his movements frustrated by the bright, twinkling blue braids that bound him.

"Poor Angelus," she murmured as she brushed her lips over the round of his shoulder and over the arch of flesh that formed the front boundary of his armpit. His bicep muscle tensed, and she felt him tugging at his bounds, a growl passing between his gritted teeth as she brought her hand up the side of his naked chest, letting her thumb pass over his armpit and graze the soft fringe of dark hair there. "You present yourself as a hard man with considerable appetites who sails through his eternal life without a care in the world," she said with a snicker. "But, the reality of the situation is that you're really quite sensitive, aren't you?"

"Fuck you," he muttered, twisting his hips with a grunt and attempting to swing away from her touch, but finding himself frustrated both by the conjured bindings that held him as well as her physical closeness.

"Wouldn't you like to?" Brennan asked, smiling against the edge of his armpit. Shaking her head, she dragged the inside of her bottom lip across his sensitive skin, taking a few moments to inhale his scent before finally giving into her own want as she closed her teeth around the arched fold of flesh that ran from his bicep to his chest and biting down firmly. She heard a sharp hiss as he sucked in a breath between his teeth, and she suppressed a smile by biting him hard again, hard enough to leave half-moon shaped intentions in his skin, then, licking the edge of his armpit again, pulled her mouth away. "You must be nearly going out of your ever-living mind for want of me, hmmmm, Angelus?"

She took a half step back and glanced down between his legs. When she saw he still fully aroused, but his cock was twitching in anticipation, she grinned evilly at him.

"You're a sadist," he said to her as his eyes snapped open, and he leveled a hard stare at her , nearly spitting his words as she threaded her fingers through the hair under his arm. "You fuckin' lunatic woman, torturin' me this way. And likin' it."

"Well," Brennan said, narrowing her eyes as she brought the back of her hand up the inside of his upper arm, caressing the soft, lighter-colored skin there. "Despite your protestations to the contrary, it's clear as day that you're enjoying this, and that would make you a masochist, wouldn't it, hmmm? Especially since you, sweetness, can end your own misery any time you wish, if only you'd tell me you're sorry and beg me to stop."

"Huh," he grunted loudly. "You forget yourself, lass, despite that brilliant memory of yours. I don't beg anybody for anythin', woman. You've known that since the very first night you brought me here and took me 'tween your pretty little legs."

She shook her head and rolled her lip under her teeth to suppress a laugh. "Which pretty little legs you'll be admiring from a distance for the foreseeable future if you keep this up," she said. "Although—to be honest with you, you seem to have something else you're keeping up there quite nicely." She stepped closer to him, brushing her forearm against the swollen tip of his arousal. "Oh, " she chuckled. "I'm so sorry. How clumsy of me."

Brennan brought her hands up and stroked the flats of her closed fists over his abdomen and up to his chest. Opening her hands, she splayed her fingers, fanlike, across his firm pectoral muscles and grinned at the vague hum she felt in his upper chest as her warm hands caressed his cool skin. It amused her to think that, for a man with passions that ran so searingly hot, Angelus had skin that felt cool to the touch; only the most intimate of his flesh could be described as feeling at all warm when she touched it. She could feel him react to her touch, his skin suddenly dotting with goosebumps as she continued to let her hands skate ever so lightly over it.

"I must confess," she said with a crooked grin. "You do have excellent musculature. I've always wondered about that. I suppose it's possibly because you sustain yourself on a diet of blood alone and don't tempt yourself with treats that might cause a man with a sweet-tooth to put on a few pounds around his middle. But you—no, you're almost all hard muscle, aren't you? All strong bone and corded sinew."

"Mmmm," he murmured as he soaked in her attentions, both verbal and tactile. "You like that?"

"Of course I do," she said with a smirk. "Which is exactly why I'm inclined to take this opportunity to really savor the experience of touching you...touching you in ways you've never let me touch you before, since I've taken measures to mitigate your natural...well—how would I say it?—your natural... grabbiness, I suppose."

"You sayin' you don't like bein' grabbed by me?" he asked hoarsely as he shot her a look of question. "Since when?"

"I didn't say that," she responded with a sly grin on her face. "You don't listen very well, do you, sweetness? Probably because you spend too much of your time exercising your tongue muscle...whether in verbal or other pursuits, hmmm?"

He opened his mouth to speak once again, but found himself without words the moment she began to move her hands again.

Brennan let her hands slide around to the side of Angelus' torso and down to his hips, but didn't abandon his chest's wide expanse of cool, olive skin for very long. She took another step closer and leaned in again, taking care not to touch his cock, which stood proudly just an inch away from her satin robe-covered hip. Her lips skimmed over the flat space between his pectoral muscles, then her tongue darted out, flicking his cool skin as she moved over the round, firm shape of his chest. He puffed out his chest a little, trying to intensify the contact between her mouth and his sensitive skin, but she pulled away slightly the moment she realized what he was doing.

"What's the problem, Angelus?" she asked. "You want to feel something more? Hmmm? If that's so, all you have to do is ask. You know how to get what you want. You just have to say the words, you know. That's it. Just three simple little words―'I'm sorry, Brennan'—hmmmm?" She turned her head and looked up into his brown eyes, which burned dark with lust and—as best as she could tell—something that was not quite anger but more in line with a rapidly growing annoyed frustration. Both results pleased her as she added, "You know how this works."

Brennan returned to exploring his chest with her mouth, pressing kisses to his skin, slowly and lightly at first, but after a few such kisses, humming a little before letting her lips close around his skin, applying enough suction that each one made a light _pop _sound as she made her way across his chest. She only stopped when she reached his nipple, but this time didn't hesitate to nip slightly as she took it between her teeth and bit down gently.

"Oh, fuck," he groaned when he felt her lips and teeth on him once again. "Come on, woman. Enough of this. You've made your point. Now, put an end to this because I know it's drivin' you just as mad as I am. Don't bother denyin' it 'cause I can smell you gettin' hot and wet for me. You don't want this madness to continue any longer than I do."

She laughed, letting his nipple fall away from her mouth. "Has all of this gotten to you already, Angelus?" she asked as she blinked her bright blue eyes at him. "It must have been a while."

"Nay—" he gasped as he felt her lower her head again, felt her tongue reach for his other nipple, and then draw it between her teeth as she bit down more firmly and elicited a fantastic hiss of pleasure from him.

"Liar," she laughed again as she pulled away from his chest. "You're such a liar, Angelus."

"Then that makes two of us," he said. "Because you know you're just as wet with want of me as I am hard for want of you. So, the question is then why are you playin' me then, woman?" he growled, jerking his hips forward and thrusting his erection into her hip. "You know what you want."

Brennan took one last hard nip and pulled her lips away from his chest as she took a step back. "Of course," she admitted slyly. "Of course I know what I want, and you're right. I would be a liar if I said I didn't want you. But, sometimes there are more important things than merely slaking your physical wants, Angelus. Sometimes it's more important to make a point...one I began to make while I took advantage of the opportunity that presented itself while you were wallowing in unconsciousness earlier as I took the chance to lay back on my bed and take care of certain business myself, admiring your lovely Apollonian form as I did so that I'd be able to resist temptation until my point was made. Because, the fact of the matter, Angelus, right now I'm most certainly less keyed up than you are right now. So, you can't use your normal wiles to tempt me into giving in to you. It won't be happening, just so you know. I've got a point to make, and _you're _going to be the one to concede this time. So if one of us is going to give in, I'm going to hazard a guess it's _not_ going to be me before the evening's over and done."

"Aye, well," he said, his words strained as he felt her palm his hips, stroking her thumbs over the flaring edge of his pelvis before bringing her hands around to cup his ass. She squeezed, pressing the pads of her fingers into his flesh slowly and then releasing it again. "I can't touch you," he continued. "But I can smell you, and after fuckin' you off and on for nigh thirty-eight years, I've gotta pretty fair idea of how fuckin' wet your pussy is just from the way you smell and the sound of your voice."

"You think I'm wet?" she asked breathlessly. "Because you'd be right on that point. I _am _wet. Very wet. And I do want you. But, what does that matter?" She leaned in, letting the tip of his cock, which was swollen as tight as a drum, brush against the soft skin of her belly, which now lay exposed as the sash of her robe had further loosened over the course of her ministrations. "Tell me, Angelus. What does it matter how wet I am for you? Tell me."

"It matters because you're drippin'," he said in a low, dark voice. "You're drippin' because of me. I bet the insides of your thighs are wet with the evidence of your want of me. That's why you can't keep your hands off of me, aye? You're just dyin' to have me touch yourself, aren't ya? But you can't, so you're doing the next best thing and enjoyin' the touchin' of me. Right?"

Brennan cocked her head to one side and closed her eyes, shrugging. "Maybe," she said, blinking her bright blue eyes open as her face broke into a toothy half-grin. "Since I already know you want to touch me, and you like me touching you...would you like to see me touch myself, Angelus? Do you think I could use that to torture you even more?"

"Mmmmm," he murmured. "Aye, lass. I always love seein' you touch your pert little titties and pretty little cunny. And if it gets you any closer to lettin' me free so we can get to the fuckin' we both know we want, then, hell yes, I wanna see you touch yourself. So, you tell me what you want to do next."

She twisted her hips against him, brushing once more against his erection as he grunted at the contact, then let one of her hands fall away from his tight, muscular ass. "I think I want you to see how wet I am for you, Angelus."

"Sweet hell," he sighed in contentment. "Abso-fuckin'-lutely, you fiendishly beautiful wench, you."

Brennan let her hand creep up the outside of her thigh, slowly as her eyes watched his follow her hand's slow path up to the round swell of her hip and across, passing just below her navel before diving between her legs. Her mouth fell open slightly as she parted her folds and drew her fingers up along the full length of her opening, gathering every bit of silky moisture she could before raising her hand to show him the extent to which her arousal glimmered on her fingertips.

"See that?" she said huskily.

"Ohhh, aye," he groaned, partly at the sight of her creamy fluids coating her fingers, but also at feeling her lean in again, brushing the soft, silky skin of her belly against his twitching cock as she brought her free hand around once more to his ass.

But, this time, her hands did not languish where they had before, each cupping the round, muscular globes of his ass. No, this time, her fingers made their way to the cleft of his ass and parted his cheeks, eliciting a surprised gasp from him followed by a hard, low grunt as her slippery index finger spread her moisture over his puckered hole.

"Holy hell," he moaned. "What the fuc—" His gravelly-voiced words were sharply cut off when she pressed her well-lubricated middle finger into his asshole, offering him far less time to adjust to the sensation than he had nearly four decades earlier when he'd penetrated her the same way for the first time, making his way easier with use of the same slippery fluids she was using then. She squeezed one of his cheeks with her fingers, whether as encouragement or a warning, he wasn't sure. "Holy...fuckin'...hell..._ohhh_!"

"You like that, Angelus?" she asked with a wicked laugh. She pressed her finger in all the way to her knuckle, pressing against the front wall of his warm, tight passage. "You once told me I had a hot, tight ass," she said with an amused lilt to her voice. "Yours is breathtakingly tight, sweetness. Hot and tight and very, very tempting. So tempting, sweetness, since I'm quite sure mine is the first finger—or dare I say anything else foreign to your handsome body—that's ever been here before, isn't it?"

"Oh, fuck!" he grunted, jerking his hips forward, pressing his erection flush against her smooth, warm abdomen as he flinched from the contact, unable to do anything but utter a string of expletives because of the sensations she was making him feel. "Holy fuckin' hell...ohhh...God!"

Brennan threw her head back and laughed at him coming undone before her. "Oh, well, well," she said in a low, velvety voice. "It must be good if I've got the darkest-hearted man in all of Britain crying out the name of the Almighty." She wiggled her finger around, then pressed again against the interior wall of his passage as he grunted and cried out an unintelligible series of syllables. "See, Angelus? Though you are no longer a man, you have the body of a man, and a man's body responds quite powerfully to having the prostate gland massaged, which is what I'm doing right now. And your body, Angelus—while admittedly exceptional in many, many ways—is no exception. Can you feel that? Can you feel me? Can you feel me inside you? Because, I know you can. You can feel me...and you like it." She withdrew her finger, leaving him gasping, then, before he could move or utter a syllable in relief or objection, reentered him, this time with two well-lubricated fingers. "You like that, don't you?" She punctuated her question by applying a steady pressure to his rectal wall. "You do. I know you do. You may not want to admit it, but I know you like that. I can feel your cock twitching against my skin, getting harder and tighter every time I do _this_." She narrowed her eyes and looked up into his. "So, tell me, Angelus. It feels good, doesn't it?"

"Fuckin' right it does," he blurted out, his blackened eyes widening and his mouth hanging open as she pleasured him in a way he'd never been before. "Damn...oh my...holy fuckin' hell on fuckin' earth..._guh_...ahhh!"

Brennan let go of his ass with her other hand and let that hand migrate slowly—or not so slowly, as it were—around to cup his heavy, aching sack. "You want me, don't you? Either to end your misery here and now by making you come, or else to let you down so you can find your own path to release? Hmmm? Is that what you want?"

"Yesssss," he hissed as she kneaded his balls between her fingers. "Damn, woman. Let me go!"

"No," she grunted, pressing her invading fingers into him as deeply as she could, rolling tight little circles along the wall of his rectum. "Not until you ask nicely." Her gentle kneading of his balls began to move faster, and become a little less gentle with each rolling pass before she folded her fingers around his scrotum and squeezed. "You know how to end your misery," she said quietly. "You just have to ask. That's it. Just say the words, Angelus. Just ask. Nicely."

"Come on, lass," he said, pleadingly, his cracked voice almost begging with each word he echoed. But, not quite all the way. He wasn't quite there either way, they both knew, to either coming or begging. "Seriously, woman. Come on now."

"Pffft," she snorted. "See? That's not asking. I don't work for you, sweetness. We're equals, and I expect to be asked...nicely...before I relinquish control and tender you over to your own cognizance."

"No," he said firmly. "I don't beg anybody for anythin'—not even you—remember?"

"Right," she said with a chuckle as she gave him one last poke at his sensitive gland, grinning at the way he hissed as she pulled her fingers out of his anus. She released his balls from his other hand as she took a step away, relishing the bereft, surprised look on his face. "So you've said."

"You fuckin' cunt," he growled when he suddenly found himself free of her touch. "This bullshite makes no fuckin' sense, Brennan. You're just punishin' yourself, see?"

She shook her head with a smirk. "This isn't about punishing anyone, Angelus," she said. "I really must've really hit you too hard in that apparently soft head of yours because you seem to have missed a rather crucial point the first time I said it, so I'll repeat it one more time. I know you're far more desperate in this moment than I am, sweetness...far more desperate, by a significant mark."

She stood back and surveyed his form, his muscles still deliciously tense as he hung from the rafters of her timbered ceiling, his skin glistening with a layer of sweat and his cock twitching as it stood at full mast.

"But, since we both know you're just being stubborn, I believe I can offer one last bit of tempting persuasion that might make you come around to doing what you need to do so we can both finally have what we really want, huh?"

Angelus watched her with a curiously lusty glint in his eyes as he tried to think what else she could do to him. He shook his head gruffly and grunted, unwilling and—though he could sooner gouge out his own eyeballs with a fork than admit it to Brennan—more or less incapable of formulating a coherent, intelligent response to her question. He was so hard, it was painful, and the ache in his balls had long since dulled into a deep soreness, and a voice inside his head hissed and growled for him to give in so he could finally let go and get some relief from the agony.

_Tell the woman what she wants to hear, _it said,_ so you can get what you want, and hear what you want to hear_—_her husky little voice, cryin' out your name in a long, peakin' moan as you push her over the edge. Give it to her, _the voice told him with a snicker, _so you can give it to her, hard and fast and deep, the way you want it. You want this. You want her. And you want it now. You want it, so just do it. _He grunted again and huffed as he shook his head violently, determined to silence the voice that was begging him to do what he had never done...to submit.

For her part, Brennan took a focused breath and licked her lips, then, tugging at her robe, she let it slide from her body in a silky whisper so that he could look at her completely unclothed form.

"Ohhhh," he sighed as his mouth fell open. His brown eyes smoldered dark with want as they surveyed her smooth porcelain curves. "You're radiant, lass. Fuckin' radiant. Especially the way the little pert pinky nipples of those sweet, tender titties of yours get all hard when you get turned on. There's no hidin' it, woman. Like I said before, you fuckin' want me. But I still don't understand, why must you torture yourself so? It's just wrong, really."

He grinned and regarded her with an upward jerk of his chin.

"So, so, so very wrong. Why all the discipline and deprivation? I've long since agreed I would rather nestle myself between your beautiful legs than those of any nun and have a long hard fuck thrustin' in that tight drippin' pussy of yours, so what change what already works so very, very well? What's with all the asceticism, lass? If I didn't know any better, combined with your hideous attire that I was quite happy to strip you out of earlier and this new found sense of self-denial, I'd almost think you've had a mind to take Holy Orders."

He stopped and then arched an eyebrow at her as he said, "The next thing you'll be tellin' me is that you've been regularly droppin' to your knees in prayer I expect, huh?"

Brennan considered his question for a minute and then gave him a rather saucy look before she chuckled, but didn't say a word as she slowly fell down to her knees in front of him.

"Oh, sweet hell," he hissed, as he saw what she was doing "So after all these years, you're finally gonna do it and drop to your knees in worship of me, aye? Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been thirty-eight years since my last confession. Aye?"

"Maybe I have a priest fetish that I never told you about," Brennan said as tilted her head and looked up at him with a pointed look in her blue eyes. "Or, maybe, I'm just going to finally push you over the edge and do something to make you finally crack and start begging, huh?"

"I don't beg," Angelus said, his voice a growl that seemed to soften as his eyes watched her hands and mouth with keen interest. "But the pushin' me over the edge part sounds great, lass. I'll definitely take one o' those."

She lifted a hand and rested the flat of her palm on one of his knees. She then lifted her fingers as she began to play with the dark hair curled on his thigh. She used the tips of her fingers to trace small circles in his skin as she said, "You have to do one _before _the other happens, Angelus."

He held the inside of his lip between his teeth as his muscles tensed at the feather-light touches. "I'm a man of resolute discipline," he said. "You can drop to your knees every night of the week and twice on Sunday, and I readily encourage you to do so, but you'll never bring me to my knees, woman. _I don't beg_."

Brennan continued to make small circles along the upward curve of his quadriceps, noting with interest that his swollen cock jerked lightly a bit each time a movement she made came closer to the skin of his inner thigh. Smacking her lips once, she stopped touching his thighs and moved each hand to one of his hips. As she wrapped her slender fingers around the curve of his hip bones, she chuckled, "I think that sounds like a challenge, which, by the way, I hereby accept."

She leaned forward and opened her mouth as she pressed towards him, taking his entire length in her mouth in one fluid movement. She relished the feeling of almost being able to swallow him whole—no easy task given his length and girth—and felt a flush of her own arousal spike against as she felt the tip of his cock hit the back of her throat. She swallowed once, more to let him feel the increasing pressure of her tight warmth enveloping him, than for any practical reason on her part.

Maintaining a fairly tight hold with her lips pressed against his shaft, she dragged her mouth from the base of his cock to the tip in a tortuously slow but measured motion. When she reached the tip, she widened her mouth's grasp on his dick just enough so that her tongue had enough room to begin twirling from side-to-side in a lazy half-circle that resulted in a deluge of wet precum droplets shooting into her mouth.

Angelus' groaned as he felt her mouth on him, squeezing his eyes shut as he battled the cresting orgasm he felt building in every fiber of his being—from the flushing of his skin to the heaviness of his balls to the curling of his toes. When he felt Brennan began to exert what even he'd have to admit was a masterful control of her mouth muscles, he felt the horribly sweet pressure on his cock increase with each passing second as she sucked him closer and closer to the moment of release.

He knew he was close when he tried to jerk his hips into her mouth, inasmuch as her magical bonds would allow such a movement, and he _almost _didn't care that she'd kept him trussed up like some wild beast that had been hunted for Christmas dinner if he could just come. However, at that exact moment, Brennan choose to release both her hands' grip on his hips and her mouth's hold on his cock. A clearly dazed and confused Angelus came to realize that the sweet warm sheath of wet pressure that had enveloped disappeared at the same time he heard her tell-tale musically taunting laughter reach his ears.

"Sweet hell, woman," he moaned, his voice hoarse and his teeth gritted as he spoke. "Please, please don't stop. God, please...just, oh, damn...please keep doing that..."

She narrowed her eyes at him and said, "You don't want me to stop?"

"Hell, Jesus, fuck no!" he groaned. "No! I don't."

"Then, I believe you have something else that you know I want to hear,"she said as she reclined on her haunches and looked up at him expectantly. "Tell me, and I promise you'll come as hard and as intense as you ever have. Just...tell me what I want to hear."

"Ohhhh, fuck, woman," he grunted, looking down at his cock, glistening with her saliva and his own precum, twitching in painful expectation. "You want me to tell you I'd do anythin' to either have you finish what you were doin' there or to let me down so I can find another way to find a way to soothe the mind-numbin' ache in my balls? You want me to tell you that?"

His words caught in his throat and he swallowed, looking away from the sight of his own cock, bereft of the warm, wet contact he sought. "You want me to tell you I'd do anythin', anythin' to feel you around me again?"

Angelus closed his eyes, grunted in frustration, then shook his head.

"Fine. _Fine! _You wanna hear that? Fine. Then here it is. I'm sorry. Tell me what to say, tell me what to do. Please, just let me feel that way I was feelin' before. I admit it. I was wrong. I want you, woman, and I want you more than I want my own pride right in this minute. So, you want me to beg? Fine. Done. What do you want? What do you want me to say? What do ya want me to do, hmmm? Tell me, 'cause I'll do it. Right now. I'll say or do anything you want. Just...just don't leave me hangin' this way."

He shook his head again. "Please, lass..."

A faint smile broke across Brennan's lips at hearing his words.

At hearing him plead to be let go, finally formulating his demand in the form of a question which was structured in a way that left no doubt that, insofar as he was the supplicant and and she the one to whom his petition was made, she was the one with the power to grant his wish and release him from his confinement.

It was all she'd really wanted by the time they'd reached that point: not an apology for his sarcastic barb about her field dress, or the moralistic rigidity that such garb represented, or even even his insults to her anthropological and archaeological research or family.

No, what she really wanted was rather a simple acknowledgement that she had something he wanted very, _very _badly, and that he was willing to relinquish control to her for however brief a period of time it took to get it. He hung in his bindings, his body slumped slightly forward in an unspoken sign of concession. His eyebrows were raised as he looked at her, his dark brown eyes wide with expectation and glimmering with desire, as he gazed upon her with an unexpected softness she'd never seen in them before.

Brennan narrowed her eyes as she surveyed his form, which, after spending the better part of an hour chafing and twisting against his bindings, had finally relaxed, its muscles somewhat slack as he waited for her to release him.

"Fair enough," she said simply, and with a sharp snap of her fingers, she recalled the magic that had bound him tightly and extinguished the charm that had kept him restrained. The bright blue braids that held him to the dark-timbered rafters flickered for a couple of moments, just long enough for him to realize that he was about to be released and to prepare himself for the sudden drop.

He swung his weight back so that his center of gravity was more centered over his feet, and in that moment, the glittering blue braids dissolved into the air, leaving behind only a faint tendril of fragrant smoke where the magic ropes had been.

"Ahh," Angelus grunted as his arms dropped to his sides and his feet came to rest flat on the hardwood floor of Brennan's home, the wood's coarse grain burnished to a comfortable smoothness by centuries of wear.

He shook out his arms and rolled his shoulders back and forth with a grunt as he stared at her shapely form, drinking in the sight of her as he gathered himself. Although a part of him—a loud, unruly voice in the back of his head to which he normally had absolutely no problem listening to—screamed for him to lunge at her and take her against the nearest solid object.

However, another voice, a lower-pitched, slower-speaking voice urged him to pull himself together, to dance a little bit more with her before making his move. _After all that, you want more than a quick, nasty, sweaty rut, _that voice told him. _This is the dance you've been doin' with her for nigh forty years. Dance just a little more, lad. Make it last, at least a little while, and it'll be all the better in the end._ _Make it count, ehhh? _ He nodded at the more patient voice in his head, then shrugged as if in response to the protestations of the surly, impatient voice, then flashed a toothy grin at the both before he spoke again.

"Good thing you only subject me to that every thirty-odd years or so," he chuckled. "Because I think you'd grind me arms outta their sockets if you made a habit of doin' that."

"Ehhh," she grunted noncommittally. "While it's possible you might rupture your rotator cuff or develop subacromial bursitis, given your nature, you'd heal very quickly. The discomfort of your restraint would long outlast any residual pain you'd have, so—"

Angelus arched his back and stretched, then leaned forward again, placing his hands on his hips as he stared at her with a faintly wicked grin. "Save it for the surgical theatre at the Royal College of Medicine or for chattin' around the campfire with those Victorian prigs that frequent with you on one o' your digs, lass," he said with a dismissive wave. "All that fancy Latin just reminds me of gettin' my knuckles rapped by the brothers at St. Aloysius in Galway, and neither Latin, nor gettin' me hands whacked nor talkin' about a bunch o' hard-up monks is any way to set the mood, my good lass. Mmmmm?" He flashed his eyebrows and cocked his head to one side, giving her a critical, one-eyed look. "Nay, 'cause after all that, I don't think you wanna be talkin' about monks, either. But I'd be quite keen to get to the part about whackin' and since I think we both know we've done enough talkin' for the night, ehhhhh?"

"Hmmm," she said, standing up, arching her back to stretch the muscles like a graceful feline, and purring a bit as she did so before she started to make her way towards the bedroom. "You're right. The last thing in the world I'd ever want to talk about, especially now, would be a bunch of Irish monks," she called out behind her.

Stopping in the doorway of her master bedroom, she placed her hand on the doorjamb and turned to glance over her shoulder with a quirked eyebrow and a lazy half-grin. "I know you're Irish, but you're not a monk now, are you?" she asked with a laugh, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she watched him watching her.

Angelus blinked and brought his eyes up from the round swell of her hip and the apple-shaped curve of her ass to meet her gaze.

"You know I'm not," he snickered as he rubbed his hands together in anticipation and followed her into the bedroom.

He moved swiftly and effortlessly, the way he always did, and quickly caught up to her, snaking his hands around her waist before she reached the bed. He felt her body heat rising off of her in waves, like the heat of a summer's midday off dark cobblestones, and, as he wrapped his fingers around each side of her waist, he felt that heat pulsing through his fingertips, surging through his limbs until he felt his want for her clawing at the base of his spine. By this point, his balls no longer hitched with each uptick in his arousal, but rather, like the tugging behind his navel, merely troubled him with a round, steady deep ache.

Still the voice of patience purred in the back of his mind, soothing him somehow despite the way he ached with want.

"Though it's true," he admitted, "that I have observed certain deprivations to be able to be in, _heh, _communion with you, lass, I'm no monk."

"Mmmm," Brennan murmured as she felt his lips plucking gently at the soft skin of her shoulder. She craned her neck to the side to give him a long plane of free access to the place she loved feeling his mouth worship. "It would be a terrible loss to womankind if you were a monk, sweetness."

He smiled against the silky skin of her neck and tried to suppress a laugh. "There was never..." He laid kisses, closely-spaced, soft and slow, along the full length of the delicate curve that ran between her shoulder and her earlobe. "Anything..." Every couple of kisses, his warm tongue would dart out and tickle her skin before his lips would reassert control of the space beneath them, drawing a light suction before pulling away. "Attractive to me...about the notion...of taking Holy Orders...though my father..." A certain bitterness edged into his voice at the mention of his father—one that was not lost on Brennan, even though the distracting feel of his kisses, since he so rarely spoke of his human family—but he closed his eyes and applied a wet, sucking kiss to her neck, and the bitterness faded away. "He wanted me to..." He sucked hard on a particular spot, an inch or so below her earlobe, smiling at the red mark he left behind, then soothed the sting with his tongue. "I've fed on a priest more than once, though," he laughed. "It amuses me."

"Did you now?" she asked, unable to summon up more than a few words as she relaxed into the pleasure of feeling his mouth on some of her most tender flesh.

"Aye," he said, his voice scarcely more than a whisper. "Not too often though...they too often taste sour, like rotten fruit."

She laughed, partly at hearing him describe the taste of a priest's blood, but more so as an unconditioned response to the searing pleasure that surged through her core at feeling Angelus work the flushed skin of her neck with his cool lips and warm tongue. The sensation was heightened as she relaxed into the experience, sighing as she felt the cool skin of his broad, hard chest flush against her back, twisting slightly as his big hands squeezed and massaged her curvy hips, his fingertips pressing into the springy flesh of her ass.

Her laughter dissolved into a long sigh as his mouth suddenly began to grasp more insistently at the skin of her throat. "Ohhhh," she breathed as he took her earlobe between his lips, drawing a long, hard suck before pulling her tender, delicate flesh between his teeth and biting down gently. "Ohhh, God, Angelus."

Angelus made humming sound that resonated in his throat as he felt her muscles tense beneath his hands. He released her earlobe from between his teeth and leaned his face over her shoulder so he could see her eyes.

"You want me, woman?" he asked in a low, husky voice. "I know it. There's no denying that part for either one of us. But since you already know I want you, and since we're equals in this, so it seems, I now want to know the same. Tell me you want me_. Tell me_. Tell me you want me, and I'll show you how amazin' I can make you feel." He pressed a series of soft kisses along the line of her jaw. "I wanna make you feel tonight like you've never felt before, not with me or any other man. Tell me you want that, too."

"God, yes," she sighed. "You know I've wanted that, Angelus—I do."

He laid another kiss on her jaw, longer, wetter and more insistent. "Since the beginning?" he asked. "I want to know. For some fuckin' reason I don't understand, I _need _to know. Fuck, woman, what have you done to me? I think you've bewitched me, lass...somehow, though I'm not normally the kind o' man who's vulnerable to that kind of thing, you...you...I don't know why, but after that first night...that first time...it seems I can't get enough of you. Never. It's never enough. So, tell me it's the same...for you...please, woman. Tell me."

"Yes," she said simply. "Of course it is. But, I think you already know that."

Angelus shook his head and grinned, then twirled her around to face him, eye to eye, pulling her hips against his so she could feel how hard he was for her. "Holy hell, woman," he rasped. "That's true enough, but sometimes I like the tellin' of it...just like you do. But, you're right. I want you more than _anythin'_..."

"Then have me," she said tersely, a bright flash in her pale blue eyes telling him more than her three short words could.

She wrested herself from his grasp and walked over to the bed, throwing back the sheets and comforter as she sat on the edge of the mattress and began to wiggle her way towards the middle of the bed.

"No," he said, lunging forward and grabbing for her thigh. "Don't," he whispered, gazing into her eyes. She gave him a strange look as he reached his hands around, pressing his thumbs against the front of her hips as his long, thick fingers curled around her waist and pulled her back towards the edge of the bed. "Do you want me?" he asked as he spread her thighs apart with a gentle nudge of his forearms. "Tell me one more time," he said.

"Yes—oh, yes," she sighed, reaching for him. "Now, Angelus. No more games. Inside me. _Now_."

"Yes," he growled, fisting himself and drawing a couple of long, hard tugs with one hand as his other hand fanned over the crisp curls covering her mound, letting his thumb stroke lazily up the length of her pink, glistening opening as she sucked in a sharp, hissing breath at the contact.

Without a further word, or even a murmur, he took one last step to close the distance between them and _finally _nestled himself between her thighs, swiping his swollen tip once and then twice along the length of her slippery folds.

He tucked his chin against his chest and rolled his hips back, then guided himself into her, clenching his eyes shut as her soft, warm, silky folds opened up for him, brokering no resistance as he slid into her.

"Ohh, God, Angelus," she moaned as he filled her up, slowly and steadily with each passing second until he was seated inside of her, buried to the hilt.

"Ohhh, lass," he sighed as he drew his hips back and pulled out, opening his eyes at last as he saw her marble-white skin flush a delicate pink, then driving in again, a bit harder, faster and more insistently than his initial stroke.

"Ohhh, fuck, you feel fuckin' incredible," he said as he drove all the way into her. "Just like I remembered...just like I wanted." The feeling of being completely surrounded by her, sheathed in her tight, wet warmth, made his mind feel like it was being pulled apart at the seams, so intense the sensations were that inundated him. No longer able to think, but only to feel, he withdrew and rocked into her again, again and again with a rolling motion that soon took on an effortless rhythm of its own.

She cupped her hands around his narrow hips, as if trying to hold onto some of the momentum as he moved faster, stroking up and into her with ever-increasing force. He leaned forward and dropped his hands to the mattress, finally bringing to bear some of the delicious pressure she'd been yearning for, and the shift in his posture was rewarded with a long moan as she brought her hands up to fan the triangle of his lower back.

"Ohhh, _yeeeessss_," she groaned as she felt his pelvis finally grinding into hers, his weight and force pressing against her clit each time he bottomed out inside of her.

She drew her fingers in a long arc along the length of his back, her neatly-trimmed nails scraping against his skin as she felt herself begin to sink into a deep, weightless spin. She dragged her nails along his back, hard enough she imagined she was leaving some kind of mark as she heard him suck in a sharp breath.

"Oh fuck," he groaned as he stroked hard into her, grunting as he buried himself balls-deep at the very moment she clawed him most aggressively. "Jesu...ohh, fuck, woman..." He hissed at the way she was marking him but something inside of him liked being marked, and so he kept rolling his hips back and pounding into her.

"Ohhhh...ohhhhh...ohhh, fuck," she sighed as the coil of pleasure that had been tightening inside of her finally broke, sending her headlong into a blinding burst of bright blue as she felt herself clench tightly around him, every muscle in her body tensing before she shattered, all of the tension dissipating in a second pulse of bright blue light as she felt him stroke into her with one last, hard jerk, pressing himself as deeply as he could as she arched her back and met his last stroke with one of her own.

The blue glow crackled around them as she saw his brow crease and his face contort as he, too, reached his breaking point and exploded inside of her.

"Ohhhhh," he groaned. "Ahhh, ohh!" He arched his back and leaned over her, his lips hovering over hers as he shuddered, uttering a long sigh as his warm release pulsed into her. He winced as the last of his convulsions shook him, letting his head drop to his chest as he exhaled slowly through his teeth as if in so doing he could meter out the last measure of his release.

"Ohhhh, fuck, lass...ohh, hell, that was good," he managed to mutter, his voice gravelly as he spoke.

"Hell, yes, it was good," she said with a crooked grin on her face and a bright, flickering flash in her pale blue eyes. "_Very_ good."

"Ohh, hell," he groaned, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his softening flesh into her one last time with a quiet grunt before he pulled away, slipping out of her. "Damn, woman."

"Hmmmm," she murmured with a smirk as she sat up and scooted her bottom towards the middle of the bed, reaching over to arrange her pillows before leaning back against them. "You aren't so bad yourself, sweetness."

"Ohh."

Angelus shook his head with a jerk and knelt onto the bed, rolling over and taking his place next to her. He grinned as his eyes surveyed her sweat-slicked form, noting with amusement how her breasts moved as her chest rose and fell with panting breaths. He leaned back against the lone pillow she'd left for him and stretched his arm out, smiling as she accepted his silent invitation and curled up next to him, letting his strong arm snake around her shoulder as she rested her head on his chest.

"Aren't you glad you let me loose?" he asked with a chuckle.

Brennan turned her head and looked at him with one narrowed eye. "Yes," she said with a throaty laugh. "Aren't you glad you let me let you loose?"

"Hmmmph," he murmured with a smile, unable to bite back his laugh for long before silencing it by pressing a soft kiss to her temple. "Aye," he admitted. "I am. And, well, maybe I deserved it—you know, just a little—the teasin', that is—_not _the tyin' up." He pulled her more tightly against him and added, "I still don't like bein' tied up like that, Brennan."

"You always said you were up for anything," she said, letting her slender fingers skate over his sweat-damp chest and swiping her thumb across his flat nipple. "I guess we all have our limits, mmmmmm?"

Angelus shook his head, rubbing his chin over the top of her head, enjoying the way her silky hair felt against his half-day's worth of stubble. "Shhhhh," he whispered, pressing another kiss to the hairline of her temple before he leaned his head back and stared up at the dark, ancient timbers that held up the facade of the wattle and daub ceiling of her home, which dated back to the sixteenth-century, even though it had been updated and remodeled every century or so.

He smiled at the thought that this house had been her home for more than a two centuries before he was born. All those years_, _he thought, reflecting on the nearly a century and a half since he was sired and gave up the life of an endlessly wanton youth to enjoy the endlessly young life of wantonness. In all_ his_ years, he'd shared the beds of many women, and enjoyed the bodies of many, many more—hundreds more, if he were to give it much thought—but in all those years, and for all the woman he'd lain with, not one of them, not even his sire, had enchanted him in exactly the same way this woman had.

Though he hardly needed to, given his acute sense of smell, Angelus turned his head and buried his nose in her hair, taking a deep whiff and grinning at the way her sweat swirled together with the rosemary and mint tincture she mixed into her shampoo.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"You," he replied, reaching his free hand around and threading his fingers between hers. "And how it is that you keep me comin' back to you again and again."

"I'm glad you come back," she said after a moment of pause. "I'm never exactly sure when I can expect you, but I always knew that you would. And then you began to give me fair warning, and—"

"You like gettin' the daffodils, don't you?" he asked, a proud grin breaking his face.

"_Narcissus," _she corrected him. "And, yes—you're right. I can't think of a more appropriate flower that I could receive to signify the imminent visit from a man who thinks so highly of himself, his physical form, his sexual prowess and skills as a lover, or, well, his personal charm."

He laughed. "You love it, though, lass, don't you?" he asked. "And, besides, I haven't let you down in any of the aforementioned categories, have I?"

Brennan rolled her eyes at his arrogance. "Like I said, Narcissus."

"They are pretty, though," he said, raising his chin from its resting place on the top of her head to glance at the vase that was he could see from where they sat on her vanity, the three yellow daffodils carefully arrayed in a different vase than the one she'd first used to set them in a drink of water before she grabbed said vase and knocked Angelus in the head with it, dragged his unconscious form to the outer room, and restrained his naked form using her magic.

"It's a good thing you had an extra vase layin' around after you really clocked me good in the ol' noggin there, woman. It'd be a pity to see those pretty blooms stuffed into a highball glass."

"True," she agreed with a small shrug. For a moment, they lay there, silent, before she turned her head and looked up into his warm brown eyes. "When do you leave?" she asked, her tone changing a bit as she spoke.

"Four days hence," he replied. "I have three nights with you before—"

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I know," she said. "You don't have to explain or say anything else, that is..we should enjoy the time we have because..." Her voice trailed off as she blinked, unsure of how to articulate the swirl of confusing emotions she was feeling at that moment.

"I know," he said. "But just in case there's any doubt on your part, you're the only thing about London, or the rest of this godforsaken country, that I'll miss."

Brennan's brow furrowed at his remark as she chuckled, "Thanks, I think."

Angelus laughed awkwardly. "No, I mean—look, lass, I..." He swallowed, glancing away again and taking a deep breath before looking down into her pale eyes. "I know you've found yourself this...avocation, of sorts, you know, and I'm glad for you. I truly am." He kissed her forehead lightly. "But I can't just stay here, twiddlin' my thumbs waitin' for you to get back. It's not my style, and I just...I, well—I just can't do it. And, well, that's to say nothing of the rest of the crew. The others have been chompin' at the bit to leave for a while now since the wanderlust has taken them, and it's been awhile since we went adventurin'. They want to see what all the hullabaloo about Transsylvania is since that little ditty by the drunk Irishman came out a few years back. What's real and what' s not, ya know? And I can't...well you wouldn't want me to..."

He sighed. "There's no place for one like me in Egypt, Brennan. And...I guess it just has to be this way."

"Angelus," she said, her voice edged with some kind of emotion he could not discern. "No, that's not true. That is, it doesn't have to be. Not if you don't want it to be true. It could be otherwise, that is, if you do want to see me again at some point."

"I _do_ want to see you," he said. "I mean, after I leave this place, and when you're back in Egypt for the next, uhh, well..."

"Dig," she offered gently.

"Aye, that," he said, he said with a nod. "For the next dig season, you know—I'd like to find some way to see you. I can't be sure when, but...I know I'll wanna see you. So, maybe, when you come in from the sandbox and I don't have to worry about gettin' my ass chafed from all the fuckin' sand out there, we might be able to come to terms when you're back in Cairo for a spell?"

"That might work," she said. "Though it's a long journey from Bucharest to Cairo, as I'm sure you know—whether by sea or overland, it'll be quite a jaunt."

"But, it'd be worth it. There's no distance I wouldn't travel to see you," he said, blinking with surprise the moment he heard the words fall from his own lips. "Although I cannot come with you to Cairo, lass, and I don't relish the thought of going for who knows how long of a time without seein' ya, and I do know that eventually..."

"Don't," she said, pressing her index finger over his lips. "Shhhh." She brushed her lips along the rough skin along the edge of his jaw, placing a light kiss just below his ear. "I know we'll eventually meet, and whenever you make your way from Romania to Egypt to see me—whether it's next season, next year, or the year after, I know we'll stay in touch. I'll write..and even if you do nothing but read the letters, you know when I can be found if I tell you now how to discern the where, hmmmm?"

"Where?" he asked, turning his head to look at her with the want and expectation clear in his eyes. "Tell me."

"Well," she said with a chuckle. "If you'll shut up for a minute, I'll tell you." She made a _pffftttt _sound and playfully slapped his cheek. "There's a hotel in Cairo that I stay in when I'm there. It's absolutely lovely—actually, the kind of place I think you would really like, Angelus, since you're a man who enjoys finery and material luxuries. It's called the Shepheard's Hotel, and it has a very excellent restaurant, The Damascus. I quite enjoy taking my evening tea out on the terrace after the sun has set and the temperature has cooled down a bit from the heat of the day. When I'm in Cairo, I'm at Shepheard's, and when I'm staying at Shepheard's, I spend my evenings on the terrace. That's where you'll find me."

"Mmmmm," he hummed. "Just don't expect me to have undergone any kind o' conversion on the road to Damascus," he quipped.

"I would expect you'd sail on one of the steamers from Greece to Alexandria," she replied. "It's the most logical course of action."

It was Angelus' turn to roll his eyes. "Why are you always so literal, woman?" he snorted. "This new leaf of literalness that you've turned over is a bit tedious. I'm not sure how or when that happened, but holy hell—"

"I don't care to see you converted in any way," she answered, her voice dropping a half octave as she unthreaded her fingers from his and traced her forefinger over his belly to his navel. "I quite like you just the way you are, sweetness, even if my literalness annoys you from time to time." She drew a languid circle around the rim of his belly button and smiled evilly as his abdominal muscles tensed at her touch.

Angelus hugged her against his chest and kissed her forehead, smiling into her skin as she tickled him again. "It's a good thing that you have other redeemin' characteristics, aye, that make it easy for me to put up with ya, then, ehh?" He shuddered as she reached to tickle him again, and pushed her away with a grunt, rolling her over onto her back and straddling her with a crooked, open-mouthed grin.

"You tease," he laughed. "You wicked, wicked tease. I'll show you how I punish wickedness like yours."

"Promises, promises," she snickered.

Brennan then arched her head back as Angelus resumed his earlier worship of her the long ivory plane of her neck, and they continued in their interlude of bed sport much to each individual's rapt satisfaction..

* * *

As the spring of 1899 dawned, the vampire once known as Angelus, the Scourge of Europe, made his way along a dusty and crowded street in the British section of Cairo. He'd obtained directions from a rather scrupulous, if dirty-looking, street merchant who sold flowers to British tourists outside the main thoroughfare that rang in front of Shepheard's Hotel.

Angelus had spent almost two weeks watching the comings and goings of the elite members of British society who turned up in the Egyptian capital, dividing his time frequenting the streets in and around the foreign quarter that was anchored by Shepheards's Hotel. He also knew from his final conversation with Brennan the prior fall that the field season for excavations on tombs in Luxor where she'd been working for several months would be ending in anticipation of the impending deluges of the Egyptian wet season. It was why her last letter to him had reminded him that if he was in the vicinity of Cairo, and bored with Romania, that he should consider taking a vacation in the sandy climates of northern Africa at the time when she'd return from Luxor to her accommodations in Cairo.

For twelve consecutive days, he spent the long hours of the Egyptian twilight waiting and watching to see if he could catch a glimpse of her.

And, then, suddenly, one evening, there she was.

Brennan, dressed in a dark red high-necked walking dress decorated with black frog braiding and a matching hat, appeared on Shepheard's terrace. She smiled when one of the servers seated her at one of the smaller tables that ringed the terrace's outer boundaries. She carried, from what Angelus could see, a pile of newspapers and a stack of envelopes, no doubt her backlogged correspondence. He shook his head in disbelief, wondering how much she'd be able to actually read in the dim light of the oil lamps that illuminated the terrace. As the server poured steaming water into the delicate white and blue bone china tea cup that sat in front of her, his eyes hungrily drank in the sight of her.

He licked his lips and felt a flash of warmth surge through his chest as he was deluged by a swirl of emotions: happiness at seeing her, desire at being so close to her, and want to be with her.

_Oh, lass, _he thought, begging her to turn her head towards the street that he might see both of her luminant blue eyes and the long, symmetrical line of her square jaw framing her slender, pink lips. _You're the very picture of beauty, _he willed her to hear from across the street. _Just like I remembered, just like I've dreamed. _

His chest tightened and the hair on his arms stood on end as he felt his skin tingle in expectation in the moments before he unconsciously stepped out of the shadows, emerging from the place where he'd hidden himself. _Turn around, lass, _he urged her. _Turn that lovely face of yours, Brennan. _He swallowed and cocked his head to the side as he pleaded in silence for her to turn and meet his eyes, if only for a fleeting moment. _I want to see you, I need to see you. So, please_—_look at me. Let me see you, just once...just this once. Please._

As if she'd heard him, Brennan turned in that moment so that he had a clear view of her face. Without thinking, he opened his mouth as if to speak to her, even though he was far out of earshot, but the ache in his chest compelled him to step forward and call out to her. Her porcelain skin seemed to have a slightly golden hue to his knowing eyes, and he wondered how much of it was a trick of the lamplight on the terrace and how much was due to the hot Saharan sun. He couldn't see her eyes, but swore he could feel their cool blue fire flickering, pricking at his skin as he stood there watching her, transfixed. Every fiber of his being strained to reach out to her, to take her in his arms and kiss her until his cold skin burned hot with want for her, and she had to break her lips from his lest she run out of breath.

He reached up and touched his chapped lips with his calloused forefingers, remembering the way her soft, slender lips had felt against his the last time he kissed her, the morning he'd left her. He swallowed, imagining that he could still taste the sweetness of her kiss in his dry, parched mouth.

However, as his stared at her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, a wave of fear crashed over him and he suddenly felt as though couldn't bear to look at her any longer. He tore his eyes away from the sight of her. _I can't, _he sighed, glancing down and frowning at the sight of his own sad state.

His clothing was streaked with sweat, dirt, and other unidentifiable stains. What was once an expensive, finely-tailored bespoke suit now was patched and fraying along the seams since he'd worn the same set of clothing day in and day out for several months. His long hair was lank and greasy, and his jaw was heavily stubbled with many days' growth since he couldn't remember the last time he'd shaved. He blinked, wondering if it was at the pension near the port in Alexandria, which he'd managed to sleep in one for night after winning a hand of cards on the ferry from Cyprus. Angelus made a face as he took stock of his appearance, and then the overwhelming sense of negativity and guilt and terror he'd felt at who he'd been and what he'd done since his ensoulment at the hands of the Romani gypsies overwhelmed him once more.

_Brennan, _he cried silently, taking a half-step back into the shadow of the alleyway as he felt his eyes burn and his nostrils flare. _She would never want me this way, _he told himself. He stood in that dusty Cairo alley, sweating as the heat of the day hung low to the ground, trapped between the mud-brick buildings on either side of him, unable to move forward, but unwilling to run. In the distance, Angelus heard the voice of the _muezzin _call out to the faithful to pray the _salah al-isha, _the last of the five daily prayers. The mournful, lilting tone of the _muezzin_'s call compounded the anguish that hung over him like a pall. _The man I was_—_the man who drove her wild, who excited her, who challenged her and danced that dance of ours, toe to toe, for nigh the last forty years_—_that man is gone...and he's never coming back. _

He shook his head and ran his hands through his greasy, tangled locks, raising his eyes to her once more but finding himself unable to see her clearly as another unwanted memory flashed before his eyes and he saw the bodies of a man, woman and child lying twisted, bloodied and broken at his feet, in a back alley not unlike this one, except the ground beneath his feet were cobblestones in his memory rather than loose white sand.

He felt strangled—weighed down by a conscience and anguish so all-encompassing that he imagined himself Laocoön, doomed by Athena who dispatched sent sea serpents to encircle his limbs with their tentacles and pulled him into the swallowing sea. Though he needed no breath to sustain him, he felt as though he were suffocating. Though his heart was cold and unbeating, he felt heartbroken. Though he'd long since ceased living, he felt dead.

He allowed himself to take in one last glimpse of Brennan sitting at her table, fixing a cup of tea and nibbling on a plate of what he imagined to be crumpets with clotted Devonshire cream or fresh baked blueberry scones. Like a desperate man knowing he had but one swallow of water left in his canteen before he would have to surrender to the slow death of thirst, his eyes devoured the brightness of her eyes, the softness of her skin, and the pleasing curve of her smile.

_But, I can't. I can't let her see me this way. I'm nothing. I'm a worthless shell of the man she desired. The man she wanted. She would never want me as I am now. I can't...I just can't. _He didn't know how much longer he stood there watching her before he slumped his shoulders with a hopeless, reluctant sigh, turning away from her with grim, tear-rimmed eyes as he melted back into the shadows from which he'd originally come.

But, even as he walked away from her, for some strange reason, Brennan's eyes snapped up from the cup of tea she held in her hand, a very faint flash of blue shone in her irises as she looked in the direction where Angelus had stood, and she stared at the nondescript spot for several long moments. Finally, at last, she made a face, slowly shook her head, and returned to her evening's repast.

* * *

~The End~

* * *

**A/N2: **_So, there we have it. Who knew that some plot would creep in at the end there, huh? Well, we did. Duh. And most of our loyal readership did, because, of course you know that Dharmasera had to toss in some angst to make the unfness steamier and more meaningful right? So, that bit at the end is a preview of things to come. Angelus has a soul, but isn't quite Angel...yet. And, Brennan's finally doing her archaeological/anthropological thing. Weird coinky-dink in that, right? _

_Up next: Chicago, 1923. The fourth piece in what is a projected series of seven one-shots (ETA: but subsequently has become a projected series nine linked pieces) will be coming to a computer screen near you. Want to see what we have in store for Angel(us) and Brennan? _

_Then, please, don't be shy. Click that wonderful shiny blue button below that Fanfic dot net so courteously actually made into a real button instead of the old hyperlink just because we asked them to so we could keep up with the shiny blue button imagery that we've been using in our author's notes for what seems like forever. _

_Okay... ::pause:: ...maybe not really, but you get the gist. _

_We're waiting to hear from you as Dharmasera operators are standing by...so don't keep us waiting, and we promise to do the same. _

_Thanks in advance!_


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